


Mordant

by minaloush



Category: Roswell New Mexico - Fandom
Genre: Abusive Jesse Manes, Angst, High School, Imprisonment, Jesse Manes Being an Asshole, M/M, POV Alex, POV Michael, Senior year, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2020-03-13 12:58:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 11,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18941428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minaloush/pseuds/minaloush
Summary: Michael and Alex struggling in the wake of that terrible night in the shed - first from michael’s perspective, then what the next few weeks are like for Alex. Ten years later, an unusual discovery upon homecoming for Alex means the last decade didn’t unfold the way Alex thought it had: Michael has had a very different decade.Inspired by a scene in the Old Astronomer by beamirang.





	1. Chapter 1

Michael doesn’t really get to talk to Alex after the night of Jesse Manes and the hammer and everything getting fucked up. They overlap in some classes, but Alex seems to be doing his damnedest to ignore him and Michael is hurting and feeling brittle from the lies they’ve told isobel, he’s the furthest from Max and Isobel he’s ever felt - completely isolated from pretty much everyone. So trying to catch Alex’s attention and having him refuse to meet his eyes...he can’t deal with steering into that pain - he stops trying to catch his eye and only looks when he can’t see him looking.

 

He watches Alex as much as possible though - so he sees his hair suddenly cut military-short one day; notices when the piercings are removed, everything defiant in Alex is suddenly lacking, all his glowing edges being slowly filed away from him. Bitterly, he figures Alex just chose an extra shitty time to be trying to make his daddy proud. Couldn’t have decided that was what he wanted before it came to hardware and rage and fear and the shaky comedown from those hours of feeling seen and understood and worthy. Maybe Alex couldn’t know everything about him, but he saw him and thought he was something....deserving. Deserving of his attention, his care. In the moment where Alex has asked if he’d done this before...Michael was sort of shocked to be asked. Both because he felt like rumors went around about him, and if Alex had realized the one about him sleeping in his truck was real, that probably meant the others were too. Nothing that had come before, that had....happened to him before this had really prepared him for this moment - where they were both interested, it wasn’t a power play, it wasn’t to hurt him, it wasn’t just....an idle curiosity. But that moment where he told Alex he hadn’t done this with anyone he liked this much was true; everything that came before had been tainted and complicated and joyless, and this felt like the potential of everything, riding out into the desert with the window down after school, future so different and so close.... before the stress of nowhere-to-be set in, made those hours tense with the sense of not knowing where you’d be caught, where you were allowed to be if not a paying customer, where was least likely to lead to being caught and sent back to the latest foster family accepting checks to keep him while hoping he’d just stay away.

 

Even though he logically knows it is coming, hearing Alex signed up to enlist enrages him so much that he has to leave when he overhears Maria talking about to Liz by the lockers that he hears all the doors in the hallway slam shut before realizing he did that without thought, his powers exploding into action he can’t take, helpless to stop anything. He has to walk outside quickly and crouch down by the wheel of his truck, knees to his chest, press his hands into his calves, trying so hard to suppress his all the rage and sadness and desperate fear for him so his powers don’t do anything else without his permission. His head throbs with the panic of thinking that he pushed him towards this, but he pulls back from that precipice because now he knows he can’t survive thinking that. He retreats to the relative safety of thinking about what a stupid fucking waste it is. Alex is going to throw his life away chasing his dad’s approval, running from himself, running from whatever this was, and probably die somewhere for oil or for no reason at all.

 

He skips his next class and drives out to the ranch where the crash happened and thinks about how fucking alone he really is. He sneaks into the barn there, it’s rarely locked and he helps out around the ranch and so he thinks he can get away with being there if his truck isn’t parked nearby. He sleeps there that night after spending hours wondering why he can’t feel Max and Isobel the way they can feel each other, why he ended up in foster care, the complete shitshow of irony his life is - of somehow being the most alien alien.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ten years later, Alex comes across something that changes his perspective of the last week of school.

2018  
  
Alex is surprised to find Jim Valenti left him the cabin, but he is exceptionally grateful to have a place off-base that isn’t his father’s house now that he’s wounded and exhausted and just not up for stress of dealing with his shit on top of figuring out how to function as this version of himself. Jesse probably wouldn’t try anything physical now, now that he’s not 100% certain he would come out on top with Alex being stronger and trained up, but he works his way into Alex’s mind, constantly radiating disapproval and making stupid remarks meant to undermine him with his coworkers and trying to make him feel small. So Alex accepts the keys from the lawyer and lets them complete the paperwork to move it into his name.  
  
His first night at the cabin, he wanders around it as he gets used to the idea of being here, opening windows to air it out and assessing what he needs to do in terms of cleaning and upkeep, thinking about what he needs to get to make it his own space. The garage next to the cabin is new - it definitely wasn’t there when he and Kyle were kids, anyways. After he’s walked around it a bit, he goes to see if it’s empty or if Jim was using it as a workshop for woodwork or something like that. The lock on the door suggests not empty, and as the keys he was left don’t open it, he sighs and leaves it for another day.  
  
It’s not a priority, per se, but the idea of it locked up does bug him enough that the next day he finds himself making a trip into town to a hardware store. Buying a bolt cutter along with the other things needed for repairs and maintenance, he returns to the cabin and cuts through the basic padlock. Opening the door, he finds it isn’t a workshop, but it’s also not empty. A few feet beyond the door, Michael’s truck is parked, covered in a layer of dust. Alex backs away, leaving the door open. He goes and sits in the chair on the porch, breathing shakily, as his mind races ahead. Ten years. Holy fuck. After a few minutes, he gets up again, walks back over. He walks up to it, rests a palm against the body of the familiar truck. Even if the license plate wasn’t the same, nine years out of date, he’d recognize this truck anywhere.  
  
There’s no reason for this to be here, locked away. Did Michael leave it with Valenti when he left town abruptly? They’d never seemed aware of each other. Looking in the bed of truck, the sleeping bag and pillow are still there, not rolled up, not tucked away to be less obvious, the way he’d seen it the time he’d figured out Michael was living in his truck. He walks up to the cab of the truck and everything inside him clenches suddenly. Inside the truck, Michael’s backpack is sitting on the passenger side, keys to the truck left next to it. On the floor of the passenger side is a reusable bag filled with clothes, a pair of pants spilling out. A few lab notebooks are on the dashboard. This is...everything Michael would have taken. Even if Alex could believe he’d leave the truck, there’s no way he’d have left his backpack, his clothes. Opening the door, he unzips the backpack and the first thing he sees is cash. He knew Michael had been saving for what he’d need to get set up at UNM, that was part of why he hadn’t taken Max or Isobel seriously when he’d heard them talking frantically at the end of the year - Michael had just decided to get an early start, he figured, moving off to start fresh ahead of time. But this has to be several thousand, virtually all Michael could have saved. Underneath that, even more damningly, is his wallet. Alex numbly picks it up, opens it to see the driver’s license, Michael’s face staring up at him, looking wary as the identification picture was being taken, the way he usually did when dealing with any authority figure or trace of bureaucracy like those that had fucked him over throughout his life. Leaving without his backpack, clothes, his money - that’s obviously not something Michael would have done.  
  
Jesus, what happened to Michael?  
  
If Michael didn’t leave for UNM, if he didn’t take any money, or his backpack, goddamn; the few precious belongings he had, he didn’t go anywhere.  
  
Alex is trying to make his brain start up again, trying to go through the possibilities. He keeps coming back to the same idea, distress coiling in his stomach, could Michael have killed himself? Did he leave his truck somewhere and Jim Valenti decided to....what, hide it? Too much like interfering into an investigation, surely. But Michael had bounced around from foster home to group home to being alone and sleeping in his truck without anyone noticing or realizing there was a problem. Maybe Jim had blamed himself and covered it up because he felt it was his own failure? That’s, bleakly, maybe the best case scenario. Alex shuts the door to the truck, leaves the garage and goes and lays down in the bedroom. He doesn’t have a bed frame here yet, but his brain isn’t up to any of this. He curls up on the futon mattress on the floor, the loss of the idea of Michael somewhere being smarter than anyone else in the room and cleanly away from everything that held him back here hits him hard enough to not be able to deal with anything else. He falls asleep, desperate for the lack of consciousness, feeling for the first time like he’s throwing himself off a cliff into the darkness of sleep.  
  
Alex sleeps for 17 hours. Not peacefully, but he doesn’t wake up until it’s almost night again. When he does wake up, it’s to one crystal clear thought: Michael didn’t choose to abandon his stuff. He wouldn’t have killed himself. Right? Not without leaving something for Max and Isobel, no matter how angry he was at Alex. There would have been a note. Something. He wouldn’t have left that money to sit there in a bookbag, he would have given it to them, given it to someone else that needed it. Leaving things to sit wasn’t Michael’s style, even accounting for all the drama of the end between them, of being a teenager. So...Michael got out of the truck and was coming back but didn’t. And then something interfered with that. And whenever he thinks about interference, things getting ruined, and plans going awry, it’s a short leap to Jesse Manes.

 

 

Ten years back:  
  
After Michael leaves to drive himself to the hospital, saying he had to go, he had to go alone, Alex stays in the shed, terrified of setting his dad off again. In the morning, he puts on a leather choker that hides the bruises around his neck, the one time his dad won’t be able to say shit about his clothing and slides back into the house, trying to be as invisible as possible. His dad ignores him, but takes him to school, leveling him with a cold look when he gets out of the car.  
  
Michael isn’t at school, which isn’t entirely surprising, (hopefully, he’s still at the hospital - what even would they need to do to fix that? Probably surgery.) but Alex knows he tries to be there all the time because he’s worried an absence will cause a phone call, will cause someone to look into the fact he isn’t staying with his foster dad and pull him back into the fucking carousel of addicts and monsters he’s dealt with so far. As the day swirls on, he hears about Liz’s sister, about Kate and Jasmine and a tiny part of him feels given a purpose to try to support Liz and Maria, to focus on their pain instead of his own.  
  
When his dad comes home that night, he is in his room, quietly working on homework he left undone so he could be doing it visibly in front of his father, showing effort at something he is supposed to be doing, not have to be there trying to find a way to exist in front of him that wouldn’t make him angrier. It’s keep-your-head-down time, like he’s used to. This, he knows how to do. He can hear his dad unlocking his liquor cabinet and pouring whiskey, and his stomach clenches. Never a good sign. He leaves him alone, until later that night, when he walks in, papers in hand and tells Alex what he’s going to do. Threats aren’t new, but them being directed at someone else are. This is a clear quid pro quo and his dad wants this badly. Alex never dreamed of any world he would agree to go into the Air Force until his dad implied he would go after Michael. Alex thinks it makes perfect sense. Michael tried to protect him. He should pay him back.  
  
He’s resolved to make sure no one can report any contact between them, because if there’s one thing he knows about his father, it’s that he’ll find ways to find out that info through unsuspecting teachers who’ll think the military man is just looking out for his son, trying to make sure he’s hanging out with the right crowd. His dad is amazing at getting people to tell him things they don’t even know he’s asking.  
  


When Michael is back the next day, looking haunted and pained, he doesn’t make eye contact, though he catches himself staring at his bandaged hand. He stares when he knows Michael can’t see him, sees the pain he’s still in, sees the fear in his eyes, sees the bleakness when his notes get returned to him, when Alex ignores him trying to get his attention, sees the way what he thinks in Alex dismissing him settles into his bones, how he gets smaller, takes up a little less space. Alex hates it, but he doesn’t know how to protect him from his father if he hears they still have any contact. 

A week later, on the computers at school on the last day of exams, he writes up a letter, making sure not to save it, printing it, then erasing all the text, he folds it up, stuffs it in an envelope, and decides he’ll give it to Maria to give to Michael after he is gone, after it can’t hurt him to know, to explain the last week, to explain his decisions. He doesn’t say he signed up to protect him, the deal he struck with his dad, he can’t put that weight on him, but he can say he only ignored him because he knew his dad would be asking, that he loves him, that he’s the most amazing person he’s ever met, that he has to go do this for himself, but he wants Michael to go make a better life for him, do amazing in college and go change the world. He’s not stupid. He knows this is it for them, that they probably won’t ever even be in the same town again, and he doesn’t let himself say things he wants but can’t have - doesn’t ask him to wait or get in contact or any of those things. He stuffs the letter in one of the secret places he knows Rosa hides things, and he plans to get it a couple days before he leaves to give to Maria. 

Like everything else in Alex’s life at this point, it doesn’t work out. The next day, Michael is gone. He wonders about trying to get out of his enlistment, the idea of Michael being out of his father’s orbit and safe thrills him, even if he’ll likely come home to visit Max and Isobel - that’s still a risk. Enlisting is also the only thing set to remove him from his father’s orbit, and the pain of Michael leaving abruptly, deciding there wasn’t anything here for him means he needs to pour himself into something, and he can’t look at a guitar without nausea swelling within him right now.  
  
The day before leaving, he hears Max and Isobel arguing in the school parking lot: they are waffling between trying to file a missing person’s report, but it’s so close to Michael being 18, they’re scared of upsetting the situation with his foster dad. He hears Isobel tell Max that she went to his trailer to confront him, make sure he hadn’t hurt Michael. Max looks stunned, he guesses he’s hurt to not be taken with, concerned about the idea of her alone with him. But she says he had no idea where Michael was, his truck was gone, everything was. He wasn’t going to say anything because he only gets one more check, but he didn’t have any idea what Michael had done, where he could have gone. He doesn’t understand Isobel’s sureness about it, but Max takes her at his word. 

They were all super close, Max and Isobel and Michael, close enough he’d thought that it was possible that Michael was involved with Isobel for a while before he saw Michael laugh at the idea when he brought it up, suspicious at Michael’s interest in him. After that, he saw it more as siblings, something Michael had mentioned about having met them in state care before they were adopted seeming to make perfect sense with what he saw between them. 

Alex and his family had collectively wounded Michael enough to make him leave his closest friends with no notice and no information hurts even more than he thought anything could. He tells himself he is grateful for every mile Michael is putting between himself and the Manes family. He retrieves the letter and burns it, watching the smoke dissipate into the air.

  



	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hand waving over the research phase, Alex finds the project Shepherd bunker.

When several weeks of research and planning lead him to this fucking bizarrely badly camouflaged bunker his dad has been hanging out in, Alex is horrified to be right. He’s more horrified to find his brother has been a part of it as well, but that gives him the in he’s looking for, and he pretends to not know Flint is in town and sends out an email, talking about recovering from the loss of the leg and feeling bad and all this other shit that makes him sound like he’s in a bad way. He’s a little surprised it works - Flint reaches back out, says he’ll be in town soon, they should get a drink. Veteran survivor guilt, works every time, Alex thinks.

 

Maria helps him by shaking the drinks she gives them, so Flint doesn’t get any hint that his shots contain anything more than Alex’s, which don’t even contain alcohol after the first shot. But the added drugs for his PTSD take Flint down at the knees quickly. Maria was concerned and then skeptical when he asked for this, but like Maria always did, she knew the purpose behind it was crucial and necessary - so she helped. She gets some random bar patron to help him get Flint to the car, and once there, a few zip ties solve that issue for now.

 

He uses Flint’s keys and ID cards to get into Jesse’s base. And there’s nothing he’s enjoyed more in his life than is dad’s look of shock right before he uses the syringe he got from Kyle. Kyle, who is stupidly earnest for someone smart enough to be a doctor, trying so hard to make up for his own bullying and father’s misdeeds - Kyle is right with him, helping bring Flint in, and he’s there when he opens the door down the hall with all the signs on it forbidding others from entering.

 

When the door opens, the constantly moving blue light that you see reflected from pools lit up at night hits Alex first, and he’s pretty sure he’ll never find it soothing again now. The light is coming from the tank Michael is floating in, suspended in some sort of liquid with bubbles flowing through it - there are monitors and tubing attached to him, it’s clearly a weirdly sophisticated set up. His hair is pulled back, up and above him in the liquid, but has clearly grown quite a bit since it was last tied off, floating behind him.

 

The tank is not really big enough for him to be curled up, but his shoulders hunch a little in the trying to make yourself smaller way that makes his stomach lurch and if Michael weren’t restrained at ankles and wrists and waist, he’d probably be a lot closer to a fetal position. No one could be comfortable this exposed - naked and restrained, everything controlling you down to tubing and wire and IVs. It’s a lot to process, but the monitors and breathing tubes and all of this must be designed to keep him alive, right? So there’s that. Alex can only hear the throbbing of blood rushing in his body, somehow so loud in his ears, as he stares at the person he’s loved the most who is probably only here because of him. Fuck.

 

He moves closer and regrets it as he nears and begins to see the scarring. Michael is covered in scars. Some look medical or surgical - neat and clinical and purposeful, but some he genuinely cannot imagine what could have made them or why. Floating there bobbing against the restraint points, it’s clear that he’s verging on gaunt, bones more visible than would be healthy. Alex swallows. Ok. He doesn’t know what he’s been through, what he’s seen, what he’s survived - if he’s really survived. Alex lived with his father for 18 years, but only those last 4 destroyed him enough to send him into the Air Force. What would ten years with his father do to anyone, much less someone who he didn’t even share blood with? Jesus Christ, he’d already destroyed Michael’s hand long before he had complete unfettered access to him.

 

Michael is unconscious, at least. That is probably a blessing. For all he knows, he could be in a coma. He doesn’t know what the purpose of this set up is, but it’s definitely not to help Michael. Maybe he’s gone, effectively broken by Jesse Manes in all the ways he would have broken Alex if given enough time.

 

He walks out the door. He wants so badly to touch his skin, hold his hand, reassure him that he’s not alone. But really, that’s part of the problem. He hasn’t been alone. Ten years of being with Jesse Manes. Kyle says something, but he’s not entirely tracking anymore. Everything is rage and the sense of bleakness at seeing Michael has really been here, at his father’s mercy, for so long. He somehow still thought he might be wrong. That even if he was right about his father having taken him, that Michael would be long dead, buried somewhere he’d never be found. He is genuinely not sure if that would be worse or better now.

 

Returning to the office down the hallway where Flint and Jesse are tied up, he stares at them. Jesse smiles a bloody smile at him. It occurs to Alex that he thinks he’s won. And suddenly, all the air is sucked out of the room, from Alex’s lungs. He needs info from them. But he’s pretty sure he can get it from Flint. He wouldn’t be able to trust anything Jesse said anyways. He moves Flint’s chair, faces him away from his father. And then he shoots Jesse Manes in the head. He pushes Flint’s chair out of the room, and locks it behind him. Let him rot there.


	4. Chapter 4

When Alex walks back into the room they found Michael in, Kyle is looking at all the readouts and data the machines are putting out, reading charts. Alex knows he must have heard the gunshot, but he doesn’t know how he looks right now and when Kyle looks up, he’s pretty sure he’ll get that answer via Kyle’s face, so he watches Kyle try to puzzle through what’s happening for a while then turns back to Michael. 

“Look, can we get him out of this? I.....I don’t know if this is providing life support or something vital,” Alex rasps, his voice rough as he places his hand against the glass. “But surely getting him out of this is the next step.”

Exactly like in a horror movie jump-scare, Michael’s eyes blink open abruptly the moment he is touching the tank. If Michael were the monster in that horror movie, he’d jump back, but the man has always been the victim here, and Alex raises his other hand to the glass just in case this is really him awake and aware suddenly. “Hey...hey there, it’s ok...” he manages before his voice gives out entirely and he looks back at Kyle, shocked and amazed, hopeful for the first time since seeing him. 

Michael smiles a little dopily at him, not looking surprised to see him but there’s no ability for him to respond in the middle of all the tubing and liquid. 

Kyle and Alex lock eyes and Kyle scrambles a little to look back through the binder he’s holding. “I mean, I don’t see anything here that suggests it’s life support, it just seems to be a containment mechanism. The liquid is....supposed to suppress...I’ve never seen this chemical marker.” 

Alex turns to him fiercely, “Get him out. Please. Figure out how to get him out and stabilize him. We’ll figure everything else out after.” 

Kyle gets to work. 

With both of them working, they manage to start to drain the liquid out of the cylinder. As Michael comes to rest, legs slanted against the glass, leaning against the side limply at the bottom of it, the liquid slowly draining past him, Alex keeps his hand against the glass, hoping that if Michael wakes up again, he’ll be soothed by his presence. Michael had smiled earlier but he has no idea if that was based in any actual awareness, he can’t imagine why he’d be glad to see him after all this time. If his dad has been holding him captive for all this time...he should hate Alex. Because this is all Alex’s fault. 

Once the liquid is drained entirely, there’s some sort of flushing system that rinses it away with water. Michael is still limp against the cylinder, being essentially hosed down, and Kyle tells Alex to be ready to catch him as they finally give the computer the command for the cylinder to lift away from the base. Moving to help Alex manipulate Michael to the flat steel table nearby, Kyle helps lower him down gently, then begins the process of disconnecting the tubing and monitors. Kyle’s anger simmers. It’s chilling how dehumanizing this must have been - humans value privacy and the ability to hide: in clothes, in rooms, in homes. Michael’s been naked in a backlit tube for sometime now, no ability to hide anything from anyone.  
When Alex has first come to Kyle and told him everything he knew, Kyle had a hard time believing it was possible. No one does something like this, even a child-abusing bastard like Jesse Manes. This wasn’t a serial killer lair, this was a military bunker where people had worked. It makes zero sense. Ten years of keeping someone captive? There’s barely even literature to read about the psychological and physical effects they would suffer because so few people have survived it. Shutting his brain into doctor mode, he tries to not react to the scarring, the paleness of someone who hasn’t seen sun in a decade, the atrophied muscles, the thinness Guerin exhibits. But it is hard to not feel, even in professional mode. Kyle swore to do no harm, but he’s glad Alex’s dad is dead. He’s glad he didn’t do it, as much as he hates Alex had to do it himself, but he won’t lose the tiniest bit of sleep over Manes’ death. 

The degree to which Michael’s had no autonomy due to all the tubes and monitors is shocking. Removing the catheter, finally getting to the last one, the one he knows is one of the worst feeling and least pleasant to remove, he turns to Alex, wanting his help. Alex who is almost floating next to him with nervousness, torn between wanting to touch and sooth and knowing how much the idea of being touched could be agonizing for someone in this situation, unsure of what he could do that would be helpful. 

“Look, it’s really uncomfortable to remove endotracheal tubing - if we can get him to cough, it will be a little easier, but I don’t know if it’s better or worse to try to get him conscious at this point,” Kyle offers, looking Alex for a decision. Alex is the person who came to get Michael, so Kyle has mentally appointed him next of kin in this situation, and will work from his suggestions of what Michael would want. 

Once the liquid had started to drain, Michael’s eyes had closed again, and none of the movement has made him come back since. Alex moves to his head, where it’s resting on a makeshift pillow of roughly two feet of his grown out curls, still tied back loosely. He strokes Michael’s cheek, “Hey, Guerin, come on, wake up for just a minute, we’re getting you out of all this, we just need a little help from you.” Michael’s eyes scrunch, and it’s such a human reflex to being woken up that Alex chokes out a laugh, his hopes of Michael coming out of this renewed. “Come on, wake up, just for a few minutes. We need you to cough so we can get the breathing tube out.” As his eyes open again, Alex watches them go from confused to wary and then confused again. Michael tries to speak, but can’t because of the tube. Kyle takes over for a second, telling him to cough and breathe out so it won’t be as uncomfortable, Michael stares at him, brows furrowed, but tries to cough, and Kyle finally gets the tubing out, just before Michael retches at the feeling of the removal. 

Michael gazes at them blearily and his hoarse voice rasps out, “Wh— the fuck?” before collapsing into coughing.


	5. Chapter 5

After a period of time Michael spends coughing before drinking half a bottle of water, he peers at Alex and asks, almost nonsensically, what had happened to his nose ring. Alex’s brow furrows at the question, seemingly so far down the list of questions he would have he isn’t quite sure how to respond. 

“Well, it’s, uh, been a while...” Alex finally lands on. 

Michael, still damp, barely sitting up with two feet of curls pulled back behind him, looks at him owlishly now. 

“You’re different. You didn’t look like this last time.” 

Kyle moves slightly at this, from the side of the room, and starts to try to figure out what to say, “Alex, maybe we need to take this super slowly, we don’t...” Kyle’s words die in his mouth as Michael finally notices him and frantically tries to pull Alex behind him, looking at Kyle as if he was the one who had put him here, rather than the person who is trying to get him out. It’s a good reminder of how much of an asshole he was last time Guerin saw him and he holds his hands up and out so he can see his open palms. “Hey, hey, hey, I’m here to help, Alex brought me.”

Michael looks at Alex in disbelief and sudden uncertainty. He closes his mouth suddenly from where he’d been about the question his intent and pulls his knees up, wrapping his arms around them. Watching Michael close up kicks Kyle into motion as the doctor suddenly realizes Michael is still cold and naked and nothing is going to help without addressing that first. “I’m going to go find a blanket or clothes or something. Uh, be careful,” he adds towards Alex, who looks at him sardonically, telegraphing that Michael isn’t the threat here. 

Kyle isn’t 100% certain that is true, though he can acknowledge the way in which the naked person of the two is definitely always going to seem to be at a disadvantage. People undergoing this level of trauma are unpredictable and it’s going to take a while to figure out where Michael’s head is at. The fact that he’s spoken at all is a great sign, he seems to have recognized them both - those are huge great things. But they are about to force some freakishly huge changes into someone who’s been in unknown circumstances for a decade. No way to know how he’ll react to that. 

 

—

Alex stares at Michael, this new tortured version of him. There’s no sarcasm, no dismissiveness, it’s all vulnerability and open wounds. He can’t figure out what happened when Kyle said Alex brought him, why that made Michael curl into himself. 

He reaches out, hand hesitating, unsure if he should try to comfort or touch him. Eventually he just asks. Michael looks up then from where his head has been hanging down, as though Alex were a new entity. 

Michael pauses and then says “I....I don’t think you’re Alex.” It’s quiet and almost to himself. It’s not an answer to the question, but then it is actually. Alex’s hand drops, he pulls himself back. 

“Oh. I, uh, am not sure why you think i’m someone else. But I get that. I’ll stay back here. Until you feel safer.” 

Michael’s confusion at Alex’s statement is childlike. He scrunches up his face, still staring at Alex as though he would transmogrify into another person suddenly. 

“You look, like, an older version of yourself kinda. I guess. And you brought him, the mean doctor. Why would -you- bring him? I thought the tests were over, that you all didn’t need me anymore. 

Alex jolts. “Tests? What te-,” he stops himself from asking. This isn’t info he needs right now. He breathes, tries to refocus. He hates hearing himself grouped in with the rest of these people, and he realizes Michael didn’t actually recognize Kyle as a threat because of his high school behavior, he was just a threat because of the scrubs. “I brought Kyle because we came to get you and I knew I’d need help.” 

“You don’t need help! You know I behave. I’ve been so good for a long time now!” Michael’s voice rises, and panic is shining in his eyes and Alex is so out of his depth here it’s tragic. 

“No, no,” he holds his hands up like Kyle did earlier, “I came to get you FROM this, not for...tests,” though he wonders if that’s a fair promise, he does have to imagine tests lie in the future as they try to get him healthy, back into a life that isn’t whatever horrifying military prison experimental torture program this is. 

Michael looks at him, skepticism written clearly, but easing back into something familiar, a crooked smile forming. “Oh; it’s this one. Ok, good. Then come here and touch me. I haven’t seen you in way too long - let’s do this while we have the time.” He looks relaxed and pliant suddenly, but everything about this change sets off alarm bells in Alex’s head. 

He frowns, trying to understand the leaps Guerin is making. “I think...I’m not sure you’re really in the right state of mind right now, let’s focus on...” he pauses, not knowing what to say. He’s pinballing right now between possibilities, trying to figure out what the lay of the land is in Michael’s head as his responses shift completely from statement to statement. He wants to say they need to get out of here, but if Guerin’s been here for ten years, is he ready for that? How scary is that going to be? How long do they have before someone else comes looking for his dad or brother? Would anyone? Also, as much as he hates his father and doesn’t trust or like his brothers, he doesn’t understand how Flint would sign on to be here, why anyone else would be involved in what...honestly seems to be the sort of thing that should take place in a serial killer lair? It’s probably time for a real talk with Flint. He had trailed off and he doesn’t say anything else to Michael right now, which returns the skepticism to his face. When Kyle pushes the door open, bundling in with a set of scrubs and a blanket and some thin worn towels, he hands them off to Alex, then walks up to Michael and says, simply, “We’re going to try to get you dry and warmed up and then into some clothes, ok?”

Michael doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t move as Kyle gathers his hair and starts wringing it out before starting to towel, switching quickly to the next set as they get soaked. He hands him the scrubs and Michael puts them on mechanically. Kyle meets Alex’s eyes from where he is standing back a bit. “It’s, um, sort of odd that they have scrubs around, isn’t it? If this is...a not exactly entirely in use military base? Not a lot of use for medics, it would seem.” Alex watches as Michael darts a look at Kyle and ponders what he’s said, piecing another misfit piece into the puzzle of today he’s trying to understand. God, what he would give for the ability to know what he is thinking. 

“I’m going to have to go talk to my brother. I hope he’s really really hungover.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation with Flint goes in an unexpected direction.

The discussion with Flint doesn’t go how Alex was imagining it. 

That’s an understatement. 

The reason his dad had Michael had always been based in his dad being a terrible human being, never in anything else. That belief didn’t explain Flint being involved, but it explained the person being held being specifically Michael. 

But it’s not that simple. 

Flint clearly expects the revelation of aliens being a thing to change Alex’s mind, to make him understand that what they’ve been doing (he still can’t bring himself to ask details yet) is a rational ok thing that he should let them continue. Flint was still unconscious when Alex shot his father and has been in another room since, so he doesn’t know what’s happened to him. 

Honestly, Alex’s mind is a little blown, but it makes a few pieces come together. The liquid in the cylinder was some sort of suppression thing for...something about Michael. That chemical marker Kyle did’t recognize. They’ve had him for a decade and experimented on him, held him essentially alone which is undeniably psychological torture, and they still feel absolutely in the right. They felt no remorse. How was it the alien his dad captured his high school boyfriend? It doesn’t feel coincidental. Those odds are terrible. Is this something his dad could have made up to make Flint think this was ok? 

Alex eyes Flint, “Is he the only alien you have?” 

“No, but he’s the only one we kept locally,” Flint replies easily. There it is. Michael’s possibly been kept off the books so his dad could have unfettered access. He’s had ten years of no longer having anyone under his thumb at home, and Michael was the perfect whipping boy. Alien AND someone queer, someone Alex cared about, had tried to protect, everything he hated rolled into one perfect curly-haired foster-system statistic no one would miss. 

Of course Alex fell for the one person most at risk from his father, dragged him into the crosshairs. 

Flint still seems to be thinking Alex is going to sign on, and the way he talks as the conversation continues makes it seem like he thinks Alex is finally going to be joining the family business now that he really understands what’s going on. 

Alex needs to let him think that. 

He’s much smarter than Flint, there’s no question. Flint wasn’t doing code-breaking, he wasn’t trying to read between the lines, he was a munitions expert, sure, but that’s not the sort of work that requires you to withstand interrogations, figure out the other person’s purpose. Alex is good at making people comfortable. But he’s never worked this hard before, it’s never made him feel this nauseated. 

“How did you find this one? How does it seem my age? It was at my school for years.” Alex hates using it for Michael, but he knows if he acts like he thinks an alien is more than that, Flint will know he hasn’t changed his mind. 

“That was all dad, before I was brought in - he said that it had exhibited a healing power, something about having healed impossibly quickly despite a pretty serious injury. It never panned out in testing - it couldn’t heal itself or others while we’ve had it, even under pretty extreme duress, but it can move things with its mind, the first time I saw that, it was real trippy. ” Flint grins at that, sounding casual. 

Admittedly, Alex’s mind is racing, because something he hadn’t thought about until now is that Michael’s hand didn’t seem at all different. The times he’d seen it pre-injury were his default expectation. While he’s thought about the damage he saw that night, there isn’t any really notable damage now. That is unexpected, but he missed it when they were caught up in the discovery of Michael being here and alive. He tries to pay attention to Flint again, this is important, he’ll wonder how it healed later.

“We’ve guessed it was in some sort of stasis for a while before turning up,” Flint continues, “It aged normally once captured as far as we can tell. It started to deteriorate after a couple years, so we worked on trying to figure out a way to keep it contained, unpowered and out of it as much as possible. We haven’t really needed much from it for the last few years, so we’ve kept it sedated and in the unit to see how things play out. Look, I know it can be a lot to come into, Alex, it looks like everything bad - I get that, I do! I had the same concerns when dad read me in. But you have no idea what these monsters are capable of - the things I’ve seen them do, it’s amazing and horrifying. It looks human because they act like us to hide, but at their core they are so different - things that are toxic to us are things they drink recreationally! Dad always worried you were too soft for this, but I know you’re stronger than he thinks - he’s always been down on you, I don’t know why, because you’re a bad ass - a real Manes man. I don’t know why he can’t see that. But others can. And I bet you can get us much closer to the answers we need in terms of protection for humanity.” 

Alex lets Flint ramble for a while, before smiling and saying, “Yeah, ok, sorry about all this. I’m going to go figure out where to get something to cut you out of the zip ties.”

He closes the door behind him. He wants to sit down for a week to try to figure this out, take into account all the million pieces he didn’t know about till now, plan for how to account for the newly moving pieces he couldn’t see before. But he doesn’t have time. He has to get Flint to help him, and he has to stop anyone from figuring out his dad is dead for now. There are other people like Guerin out there, they have to protect them too. Fuck. He wishes he’d known how complicated this was going to be coming in. He has to figure out how all these things were functioning and how soon alarm bells are going to be set off wherever the others are kept by his actions here. At the same time, he needs to get Michael out of here, needs to figure out someplace safe and private for him to be. He steps back into the room with the remains of his dad. Like most of the rooms here, there’s a drain in the middle of the floor. He notes some of the blood flow from Jesse has already disappeared that way already. He grabs his father’s phone from his body and tries to think about what is salvageable here. 

Now he has to go explain the alien thing to Kyle. And then explain how they need to drug the hell out of his brother again now.

Alex tries to imagine saying these things outloud to someone else and chuckles slightly at the surreality of everything. Today has been so different than he imagined. He honestly never believed Michael was still alive, he came here to figure out what his dad was doing, expecting to have to torture the information about Michael’s death out of him, figure out if there was anything left to rebury or give some sort of respect to. Finding Michael, while obviously he’s ecstatically glad about it, he’s baffled at how to handle this from here. Kyle had been the one to suggest his dad could still have him, Alex is pathetically grateful to have brought Kyle in on it and along today. He can’t imagine what discovering Michael on his own would have been like. He can’t imagine what tomorrow looks like. He can barely figure out what the next hour looks like. He heads down the hallway to where he left Kyle and Michael.


	7. Chapter 7

The whole alien ‘cat’ is definitely out of the bag when Alex walks back in. Kyle is up against the wall, opposite Michael, who is across the room in the corner, a small huddle of scrubs and curls with blood trickling out of his nose. 

“Glad you had time for a nice long family chat,” Kyle says in a sarcastic but stressed tone, still aiming for reasonably pleasant sounding to not set off Michael more. “I’ve just been....pressed over here against the wall for a while, through no means I can see, but I’m guessing some of the stuff I didn’t get about the chemical suppression system is becoming rapidly apparent. Leave any thing out of the briefing yesterday, Alex?” 

Alex snorts. Then just for a second, he collapses laughing. “Oh my god, your face.”

“Alex!”

“Well, I’m sorry, Kyle, it was news to me too, that’s what made the little chat take so long. But yeah, I guess we’ve figured out a part of the why.” 

Alex turns towards Michael, now pretty aware this could go badly. 

“Hey Guerin, come on, Kyle’s with me.” 

A harsh gasp from Kyle pulls Alex from trying to get Michael’s attention. “Uh, maybe rephrase that, Alex. I like breathing.” 

Kyle looks notably less comfortable than he did 30 seconds back, his face going a little redder, and he sounds a little more choked.

Alex turns and walks over to where Michael is against the wall. He pulls over a chair because he isn’t getting down on the ground if he isn’t sure he has someone to help pull him up, and sits down next to the...alien he’s known most of his life. Things are very very weird these days. 

“Hey Michael. Kyle’s here to help us get out. We do really need him and we do need him to be able to walk around to help us. Think you could maybe let him down?” 

Alex still isn’t sure where they are on the whole Michael believing he actually is Alex thing, but what else is there to try? 

Kyle is slowly lowered down the wall. His face returns to a normal color, but he looks pretty freaked out still. 

“Ok, so fun news first,” Alex says bleakly to Kyle whole sitting next to Michael. “Kyle, you’ve probably pieced some of this together, but this is not the only person my dad felt should live in a Guantanamo style setting for....where they were from, I guess. There’s someplace else where they are keeping people. There are more. no clue about the details. Only source of info is Flint. Who is 100% convinced this is all A-OK. We need him to figure out how to handle the rest bc obviously my dad isn’t,” Alex pauses for a moment, swallowing down the reality of the situation, “going to be of any help,” he finishes up weakly. “And we have no way of knowing how long until him not checking in is going to be noticed.”

Kyle glares at Alex. “Well, this has all spiraled out nicely. Look, we need to get him,” gesturing with his hand at Michael, “somewhere safe first, surely. How on earth are you going to convince Flint to help?”

Alex looks directly at Kyle, “I’m absolutely certain I can’t, so I need him super sedated and groggy. ASAP. Until we can figure out a plan, until I can figure out exactly what was happening.” He’s not ashamed of asking Kyle to do this, it’s unfortunate, but there’s no way to protect Michael that doesn’t mean figuring out the full extent of what this whole enterprise is and stopping them from looking for him. Honestly, they can’t really let his dad’s team continue doing this to people like Michael who maybe won’t have people to come across them in some bad horror movie circumstances. This isn’t acceptable and it has to stop.

Kyle sighs, but he doesn’t disagree. He continues glaring, but heads out to look around the room where he got the scrubs. It’s a bounty of sedatives and a whole bunch of drugs and things that he’s never seen before. He packs some away, thinking through dosing and timelines and how to keep Flint awake enough to talk but not fight, weak and suggestible. It feels gross to be thinking this way, but what about today hasn’t been exceptionally horrifying? 

Kyle isn’t an idiot, he knows what just happened 15 minutes ago. Michael held him up against the wall in the air via his fucking brain - some kind of Stranger Things style bullshit. And he thinks back to the first stuff he was reading about the tube Michael was in and the suppression/containment. That...is probably good knowledge to have and a good substance to have on hand. By the time he gets back to Alex with a plan, he has a pitch he’s got to make, though he knows Alex isn’t going to like it. 

When he returns, it’s to find Alex in the chair still, holding a wet paper towel to Michael’s face, while Guerin leans into his knee as though he were magnetic. The man is plastered to Alex’s leg all the way down, trying to maintain as much contact as possible. 

Alex is stock still, looking overwhelmed, having gone from certain they were breaking in to search for remains at best to having this suddenly thrust upon him. The idea of trying to get someone who has been through anything like this past any of it is so genuinely beyond their capabilities that they have no idea what to do. Kyle and Alex just stare at one another for a few seconds, the joy of Guerin still being alive, the danger they are all in and everything else weighing upon them. 

“Ok, first things first, I have what we need for Flint. But I need to talk to you about how we’re getting out of here and the plan from here. Because honestly, we have to figure out how to do this....safely.” Kyle’s chin juts towards Michael as he emphasizes the last word. 

Alex realizes what he’s saying, and he gets it on one hand. Michael is a giant box marked FRAGILE: UNKNOWN QUANTITY in bright red letters. Guerin has no idea if he can trust them, seems semi-out-of-it and can suspend someone in the air and cut off breathing. It’s dangerous to travel with him somewhere unknown where there are people. It’s almost certainly dangerous to be alone with him. They don’t really know what he’s capable of, not really. But on the other hand, sedating him again after all this seems cruel and more likely to result in him not trusting them. 

“We don’t really know if those things can still happen when he’s unconscious, actually.” Alex points out. “PTSD isn’t fun without the added....whatever that was earlier.”

“I know,” Kyle says calmly. “That’s why I think we should use the liquid from the tube. Based on how they used it, it’s not toxic, but it will suppress the...abilities,” Kyle ends up waving his hand a bit to indicate the weirdness of trying to figure out how to talk about all these things he didn’t believe in 2 hours ago. 

Alex’s face turns stony, “We’re not THEM, Kyle, we can’t do that. We don’t know what it feels like to him. It could be like losing a sense, like being locked in a goddamn tube.” 

Kyle puts his hands up, “Hey, let’s not have the tones of voices set things off again, eh, Manes?”

Kyle realizes his mistake a second too late, but he’s already up by the ceiling by then. Of course the name Manes is going to remind him of Flint and Jesse. Definitely time to lose that as a way to refer to Alex. “Well,” Kyle gestures to his current situation and the gentle way everything in the room is vibrating, “Note how we are NOT in a moving car right now and imagine how that’s going to go, Alex.” 

Alex is trying to soothe Michael from next to him but Guerin’s looking more alert now than he has since before Alex left to talk with Flint. 

“It’s ok.” Michael’s voice is still rough from disuse, but he’s been slowly lowering Kyle back down and he holds out his arm, exposing the crook of his arm. 

Alex looks mulish still, but he lets Kyle slowly approach and while Alex telling Michael how they will be careful and protect him while he isn’t able to do so, he watches as Kyle injects the serum into him. 

Michael scoffs to himself at the idea that they’ll protect him, but he sits next to Alex’s chair pliantly while Kyle holds his arm. He braces himself for the burning as it moves through his system, but it’s never something he can feel prepared for when it starts. His eyes squeeze shut, he can feel tears leaking from his eyes and he curls in on himself, rocking as he gasps through it. He’s rarely this unrestrained when getting this injected, it’s almost refreshing to be able to react physically, trying to distract himself by pulling at the scrubs, by thrashing his head against the wall. 

Alex turns to Kyle immediately, “What the fuck is happening? I thought it wasn’t toxic! It’s hurting him!”

Kyle is looking at Guerin while he writhes and slowly fades out of consciousness, slumped against the corner as though he’s everything he’s ever done wrong in his life, but the doctor pushes back at Alex, responding, “They wrote it wasn’t harmful, that it didn’t damage him! He said it was ok! I don’t know why it’s causing him pain but we can’t do anything about it now - we wouldn’t know how to flush his system even if we could, even if we had the setup. We need to get him out of here and somewhere safe and then never use this stuff again. I didn’t know it would be painful but now we’ve done it, we can’t waste this.” 

Alex listens to Kyle and steadies himself, “You’re right. Let’s get him to the car. Then we’ll come back for Flint. And as much of the data they’ve produced as we can possibly get. And then we need to torch this place to a degree that makes investigations of remains impossible.”


	8. Chapter 8

Michael hadn’t gotten a new Alex in a long time. The Alexes he’d previously had were pretty well-worn territory, having occurred several times each as he was kept here. 

He’d had successful musician Alex, leading him away from the cell to another room to catch up, seemingly unphased by the context of finding Michael here. He’d seen sneaking-in-to-visit Alex, apologetic for what his dad had done and trying to make it up to him before he got back - always a nice one. He’d had an Alex who saw he was an alien and told Michael he was, too. So many versions of Alex. He’d had a previous here-to-rescue-you Alex, but that one had ended badly, with Jesse killing them both. That was the one that made him realize it was in his head - when he was still alive and nothing had happened when he woke up. When Jesse walked in again and didn’t taunt him about it - because he would definitely torture Michael with it if he could. He had tried to keep the various Alexes catalogued in his mind, though. 

The ones he thought of as the Other Alexes were very different, weren’t ones he liked to see. There was an Alex marched in by Jesse, being told all about Michael by his father, his face turning horrified as he learned about his one-time- lover being an alien, pledging to join his father, staring at Michael with hatred and disgust, looking betrayed. There had been a ghost-Alex, telling him Jesse had killed him and asking why couldn’t Michael have saved him, why did he leave him to his father’s wrath? There was the Alex that found him once he’d been moved into the tube and then turned away after staring at him examining him up close, walking right back out the door without a glance backwards, never even speaking. There was an Alex that became a doctor and was the most sadistic of all, driven by his anger at Michael for lying to him about being an alien. He’s watched the alien disclosure ripped away from him a million times by Jesse Manes, by circumstance, all playing out in front of him. He wishes he’d told Alex up front, wishes he knew how it actually would have gone. Now that’s he’s lived out all his worst fears anyways, it seems stupid to have not told the person who he cared most for. He thinks if there was one thing he could change besides being here trapped here, it would be that. 

 

This new Alex was a strange variation. He is so much older - looking actually like an adult, not the high school Alexes he’d known. He was kind to Michael, but he seemed confused, sad and angry at various times, though not in the same ways the Other Alexes. It was sort of the opposite of Dr Who - the alien was the one not changing, while the human companion morphed and alternated into various versions. 

Still, this was wildly new - usually their interactions were still based at the bunker, they never went elsewhere. When things were good, they used rooms Michael hadn’t seen before that Alex could show  
him to and when things were more in the style of the Other Alexes, the labs or cell were usually sufficient as setting. This new version involving the outdoors was a whole new concept, he thought as he blearily watched the sky pass by with his head flopped back, looking out the skylight of the SUV as Alex and the doctor talked quietly up front. Was the sky always this blindingly intense even inside a tinted car? The numbness that followed the pain of the serum had settled into his body now - it was keeping his eyes from hurting too much from the brightness, but he was still squinting at it. But when had he even been able to remember enough sensation of what the sun felt like to summon it as memory or even imagination flexing? Not for so long. Michael feels pretty good letting this unfold, so far it’s been new and unexpected and he’s very curious to see what happens next. This doctor has been completely different from all the others who’ve used him as a subject here at the facility. He hasn’t gone out of his way to be cruel, he’s been realistic about Michael’s danger, but not with the sort of fear-mongering stupidity the other doctors had initially displayed, nor the bored sadism as they tried to figure out how to take him apart. Yeah, he’s happy to ride this one out, see where it goes. He’s been so bored and out of it for so long. At this point, any new stimuli is something he’s open to exploring.

Despite how much he’s enjoying this weird new experience, Michael falls asleep during the drive. Alex and the Doctor are talking quietly in the front and everything is fully too much. Waking up in the car was still unexpected, feeling cloth seats and finding himself seatbelted in. He wants to laugh at that; the absurdity of it. How fucking lucky he would have been to have died in a car crash. Having decided to see where this is going, though, he stares at every detail, looking at Alex’s face as he talks something through. He can’t focus on the words enough. He floats back into sleep, his head lolling gently against the window.


	9. Chapter 9

10 years ago:

Michael has generally been a light sleeper, but that’s over once he’s downing enough acetone and alcohol to deal with the pain in his hand enough to even be able to sleep at all. He’s got money he’s earned, money he’s stolen, all squirrelled away, he’s getting out of here soon. And then Max heals his hand with no warning. He doesn’t have time to tell Max that he probably needs to have his hand fucked up visibly to not draw attention from the creep who did it, but he supposed he’s unlikely to see Manes again now that he and Alex won’t even be in school together anymore. Still, he’s getting out of here. Just a few more weeks, if he can make it through Alex continuing to ignore him. Even physically healed, his hand still aches, something like phantom pain. He continues to overmedicate.

 

And then it doesn’t matter how close he is to getting out of Roswell because he wakes up to a knee in his back, his hands twisted behind him, the bandages he’d kept wearing to hide the abrupt healing cut away and he turns his head to the side to see Jesse Manes holding a gun on him while this other person twists his arms more and holds out his unbroken fingers for Manes to see. When he smiles, Michael knows everything is over for him. He does not know what to do in this moment. He’s spent his whole life trying to avoid any attention like this, but he doesn’t understand why Manes came looking for him, why he had thought to check his hands. His immediate fear is for Max, that stupid earnest motherfucker who has doomed him by trying to fucking fix something as broken as Michael. If Jesse knows his hand is healed, what else does he know? He has to keep Max and Isobel safe above all else - his life is over, no matter what - but maybe he can still keep them out of this. The man behind him reaches under him and loops his arm around his throat, choking him out. He knows everything is fucked now, so he tries to reach out and throw him off with his power, but it doesn’t work. It’s never just completely not worked. The man starts to move him while he’s on the edge of consciousness, turning him to face Jesse in preparation for moving him from the truck. He feels small and terrified and hopeless as he’s thrust toward Jesse Manes and he has the final thought that he hopes he never wakes up. He hopes they hide his body somewhere it’s never found, and this is just the end and everyone moves on. Michael realizes that is the best way this could possibly go. His eyes close while still seeing Jesse’s smirk.

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

Alex and Kyle's hastily assembled plan involves taking Michael to the cabin and then going back to the bunker. It’s a stupid plan because Alex parks once they reach the cabin and realizes immediately that he can’t leave Michael here alone or with Kyle. He’s held Kyle against the wall and ceiling and either doesn’t trust him or, maybe, doesn’t actually remember him or realize he’s Kyle....which might be for the best - he doubted Guerin was the biggest fan of high school Kyle.

 

Alex turns to Kyle, “How long do we have before Flint is conscious again?”

 

Kyle pauses before responding, “Everyone metabolises differently, but maybe 6 hours from now?”

 

“Ok, uh, let’s get inside, figure out how we’re doing this.” Neither has to say they didn’t anticipate bringing someone back and they definitely haven’t baby-proofed/captive-proofed/alien-proofed the cabin. Kyle suggests he go in and work on it while Alex and Michael stay in the car for a bit. Alex can only half-smile imagine Kyle frantically hiding knives now that they know telekinesis is a thing. Alex watches Michael sleep from the driver’s seat, his face unwrinkled in sleep. For as rough as the rest of his time seems to have been on him judging by scars and how much he’s wasted away, his face is unwrinkled and he thinks ah, yes, this is that slow motion panic attack that has been coming, just sitting here thinking maybe liquid tube storage is a great alternative to moisturizer. Michael has been alive for ten years. Alex has lived what feels like a whole life in that time, deployments, adulthood, while Michael has been in his dad’s control. He can’t imagine what that would do to someone. He had 4 years without his mom protecting him once Jesse turned on him and felt like he barely survived, but he had no idea what unfettered access and no outside people to see bruises or broken limbs would let him do to someone.

 

Now what are they going to do? They need Michael to recover, they need a place for him to deal with the trauma and they really only have the cabin. Alex texts Kyle, suggesting they move everything out of the bedroom they slept in when younger except the twin beds and desk/chair. Kyle responds he’s already on it. How do they do this? They don’t want him to feel captive again, but they need him to recover before they can really deal with the trauma he’s been through, figure out how to get him back into regular life, though what that would look like, he can't imaagine. What if he wants to leave now? They probably would have to let him or aren’t they as bad?

 

He glances at the scarring again and thinks, well, maybe not, but let’s aim for more than to not hit that worryingly high bar. What does this level of long term isolation and experimentation even look like to recover from? He composes a text to Kyle to start thinking about what else they need for this - what they need to get him healthy and functional but he’s sure Kyle is already thinking about it so he leaves it unsent. Kyle texts that the bunker might be the better option but they both end up typing for several minutes without sending anything until Alex just texts back no after trying to imagine putting him back in another bunker hidden away and decides they can’t do it.

 

“But hey, those things my dad kept around for detoxing and keeping people hydrated will totally come in handy now,” Kyle points out when he comes back out to the car.

 

Alex clears his throat and says, “Guer-....Michael?” No response, so he tentatively reaches out a hand to softly touch his ankle where the scrubs rode up during the drive, the closest part of him.Michael’s eyes are open immediately as he pulls himself up, but he doesn’t move his ankle away, eyes drawn to Alex’s hand on him, unbelieving.

 

“Alex?” He asks, scratchy sleepy voice confused. 

 

“Hey, we’re here, time to go inside, ok? You want help getting there?”

 

“Umm. Yes, probably.” Guerin looks like admitting this costs him a lot, like needing help is going to end with anger and pain. Maybe it has. Alex wraps his arms around his shoulders and they move together towards the cabin.


End file.
